Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design, 2nd Edition

Level 1

Welcome, N00bs!

THIS CHAPTER IS written especially for people who are new to video games and how they are made. I talk about what is a game, who makes them, and what kinds of games there are. It’s pretty basic stuff and if you already know it all and are not a n00b,¹ feel free to skip it. However, you are going to be missing out on a lot of great stuff. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Within the academic gaming community, there are many different definitions for what qualifies as a game. Some scholars insist that “a game needs to be a closed formal system that subjectively represents a subset of reality.”² Others say that games need to have “players in conflict with each other.”³ I think those definitions are trying too hard to sound smart.

Game definitions are often simpler than that. Bernard Suits wrote that “playing a game is a voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”⁴ This is a pretty amusing definition, but still a bit too scholarly for my taste. Let’s keep things simple. Let’s consider hand ball. You need only one player for hand ball. Where are the other players to be in conflict with? Bouncing a ball against a wall without missing it is hardly a metaphor for reality—unless you lead a very boring life. Let’s face it, sometimes a ball bouncing against a wall is just a ball bouncing against a wall.

Playing hand ball may therefore seem like a time-waster, ...